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Jurgen Klopp optimistic Roberto Firmino will be back to face Barcelona in Champions League


The Brazilian missed Friday’s rout against Huddersfield (Picture: Getty)

Jurgen Klopp is confident that ‘machine’ Roberto Firmino will overcome his muscle injury in time to take on Barcelona in the first leg of Liverpool’s Champions League semi-final.

The Brazilian was surprisingly absent from the team sheet at Anfield on Friday night for the Reds’ comprehensive 5-0 victory over Huddersfield, with Daniel Sturridge leading the line instead.

Klopp confirmed that his frontman suffered ‘a little muscle injury’, but, speaking after the game, he still expects to be able to call upon Firmino on Wednesday night.

Firmino watched Liverpool’s win from his sofa (Picture: Instagram)

Responding to rumours that Firmino’s season was over, Klopp told BBC Sport: ‘Do not believe 3% of what is on social media! Roberto Firmino is not out for the rest of the season. After training he felt it a little bit and this morning he still felt it.

‘It’s a small tear but it’s Bobby so I would say it is likely he is fit for Barcelona because he is a machine. It’s good we showed we can play without him.’

In his press conference, he added: ‘He trained yesterday completely normally, it was not high-intensity we just had to work on set-pieces a little bit and here and there a couple of things. I didn’t see it in training, it happened in the last situation of training and he felt a muscle a little bit.

‘Now, the official diagnosis is he has a small tear in a small muscle, so apart from the word ‘tear’ everything else is positive.

‘It is Bobby, so he might be ready for Wednesday, but we obviously don’t know in the moment. Because it is him, it’s rather likely that [he will be] than not, but we will see. Of all the bad news you can get it is pretty much the best, but it’s still bad enough that he couldn’t play tonight.’

Liverpool swatted aside Huddersfield with ease on Friday, but face a far sterner test against La Liga leaders Barcelona and Klopp believes hard work is the key.

Liverpool returned to the top of the table even without Firmino (Picture: Getty)

He continued: ‘We are happy with the points we have and now we are focused on the next game. We have a mindset that works and we try to create problems for each opponent by working hard.

‘It’s obviously an outstanding group of players, who did well against a Huddersfield side who are much better than the result shows. They had proper counter attacks so we needed to be patient and we scored wonderful goals.’





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